


Flash line

by someinstant



Series: Foundry [5]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Complicated Relationships, Episode Related, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I'm pretending this is canon compliant, Pining, Post-Episode: s08e04 The Last of the Starks, References to Illness, Since they didn't show me otherwise, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 16:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18995998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/someinstant/pseuds/someinstant
Summary: Steel can only be one thing at a time.





	Flash line

**Author's Note:**

> Yup, we're still rolling with canon plot points. No, don't back out-- trust me. It's like a sonnet, yeah? Rhythm and rhyme might be structured, but I can put whatever the hell I want in those fourteen lines. And I'm gonna.

She was kind, he thinks, distant.  Didn’t laugh in his face. Didn’t call him an idiot.  She was kind, and Arya is rarely kind.

He is grateful it wasn’t worse-- but bitter gratitude and drink and humiliation sit badly together in his gut. The world is swinging between boiling hot and bitterly cold, and it is entirely possible that he’s about to be sick.

“Fuck,” he says.  He settles heavily on his bedroll in the smiths’ quarters. It’s empty; the other men are drinking or dead or gone to bed with someone welcoming. “Fucking hells,” he says, quieter, scrubbing at the corners of his eyes, his fingers coming away damp. Outside, voices slur their way through drinking songs.  

Gendry rests his forehead against his knees, and breathes slow. Tries to will the rolling world around him back into something static and understandable.  Tries not to think, or remember the warm press of her lips on his, the way for a moment he was terrified and elated that she would accept. He can’t help it.  He thinks: _She was a friend, once. Don’t have many of those_ , and isn’t sure how to manage the hurt of something so vital carved out of his middle.

 _I called for a knight,_ the drunk voices chorus, and Gendry wishes the night undone.

* * *

It takes the girl a half dozen attempts to get his attention; he is in a foul mood, hungover and nauseated, fumble-fingered with cold, and fighting to pull the bottom leaf of one of the great bellows back into position.  He is determined not to think of anything beyond setting the smithy back to rights. The half-healed wound on his thigh feels tight and hot as he crouches and tries to untangle the ties that have twisted beneath the leaf, the rough wool of his trousers painful as it rubs against the raw edges.

“Milord,” the girl says behind him, the patience in her voice wearing thin.  Gendry turns to see which fucking waste of a highborn is ignoring her, and she says, “Lord Baratheon,” and-- oh, the morning is not going to improve, is it.

He has a room in the keep, it seems, and it is somehow important that he relocate there, immediately.  “I don’t mind the quarters I have now,” he tells the girl, a bit desperate, pushing himself to rise on reluctant legs.  It isn’t a lie; he has bedded down in far worse places, with far worse company. And the keep is too near to recent mistakes for his peace of mind.  But the girl just ducks her head and says, “Milady says it wouldn’t be right, milord,” and stands, rooted in place, until he follows. He grabs his cloak as they pass the storeroom, pulling it close around him.  He still hasn’t got used to the cold-- doesn’t think it’s possible-- and the wind bites bloody at his cheekbones and steals his breath. Makes his bones ache.

The girl leads him to the Great Hall and hands him off to an upper servant, a neat woman with eyes like cold flint, who apologizes for the state of things as she leads him up staircases and down hallways, as though he has only just arrived in Winterfell and didn’t see the dead break over the bailey walls like waves.  The stairs try his leg more than he would like, and he looks down to be sure of his steps. The flagstones are damp in places from a recent scrubbing, rust-colored stains seeping into the mortar between the stones where a body must have lain. He wonders whose death he has trod upon.

“It should have been the northwest room, of course, my lord,” the servant says as she opens the door for him.  “It’s a finer prospect. But the dead were there, and it’s still not fit.”

Gendry nods, not sure what to say. She’s clearly concerned that he’ll find the room he’s been given an insult.  But he has slept in a pen in the mud, dreamt while men next to him shook themselves to death with fever and starvation, closed his eyes to search for oblivion while sloshing in cold water along the keel of a sea-tossed rowboat.  The room could face all seven hells and he wouldn’t give a fuck.

“I’ll send someone to help you with your things,” the woman says, and Gendry snorts.  

“Haven’t any,” he tells her, seeing her affronted look.  Shrugs. “Some tools in the smithy,” he amends.

“Would you like them brought here, my lord?” the woman asks, her face blank.  Gendry knows that vacuousness; he has felt it on his own face often enough when some highborn fool set him to make a sword beyond their lifting.

He shakes his head; a poor choice with last night’s ale.  “They’re meant for smithing,” he says, flat. What would he do with them in the keep? The servant seems to be waiting for something, and, feeling out of his depths and unable to focus and angry about it, he says, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I’m meant-- is there something you want of me?” he asks, not sure how to make her go and leave him alone, or even if that’s what he wants.

The flint in her eyes warms just a touch, and Gendry has the uncomfortable sense of being pitied.  He wants to hit something. Preferably steel, but he holds himself still as he can manage. She purses her lips, as though working through a difficult problem.  “If you would like, my lord,” she says, slowly, “You could send for Maester Wolkan. He might be of use.”

“He might,” Gendry agrees, reluctant.  He’s never had much use for maesters, with all their robes and chains and secrets, but a maester might know how a bastard blacksmith could be a lord, or if he had to be one at all, or how to spin the days backwards and make the world make sense. How to forget a woman who doesn’t want him. If nothing else, the man might know a cure for a hangover, and the pounding in his head makes the decision for him.

“Right, then,” he says.  Straightens his shoulders. Tries to remember the tone Snow uses when he wants men to obey. “Please ask Maester Wolkan to-- attend me.  When he can,” he adds. He might be a lord, or he might not, but isn’t an arse. There are still many injured in the barracks. “I know he has many duties.”

The woman ducks her head.  “Yes, my lord,” she says, and makes to leave.  She pauses at the door and says, “Good luck.” It shuts behind her, and though the room is a fine one, he hears the echo of iron bars.

* * *

It is warm, inside the keep, unseasonable-- warm in a way Gendry hasn’t been since he left King’s Landing months ago.  There’s a fire in the hearth, and the hangings on the rough granite walls match the dull browns and greens and faded blues of the bed curtains.  It’s a featherbed, and he is glad it isn’t draped in red. Isn’t sure he can sleep it it, anyway, when the time comes.

He undoes his cloak, feeling the sweat prickle between his shoulders, hangs it off the back of a heavy wood chair by the fire.  He remembers the cold rain trickling down the back of his neck at Harrenhal, and Arya shivering next to him in the pen, cold stone at their backs, before she became Lannister’s cupbearer and a ghost and whatever it was she is now.

“The walls at Winterfell are warm,” she had told him, through chattering teeth.  “There’s a hot spring in the godswood, and Bran the Builder threaded it through the walls, like blood,” she recited, like they were words she had heard often. He remembers how slight she was as a child, how cold and and angry and afraid.  He remembers how she twisted, rested her head against his arm, how he moved so she could curl herself against his chest, as grateful for her warmth as she was for his.

“How do you get a spring to run through stone?” he had asked her, trying to think of something other than the cold and hunger and stink of mud and shit.

She had shrugged her thin shoulders and said, “I don’t know.  But if you press your ear to the walls, there’s a heartbeat. Must be a heart somewhere, too,” she had said, her ear to his chest, and he had focused on breathing slow and even as she fell asleep.

 _Must be a heart somewhere_ , he thinks, and steps forward to the curved wall of the keep.  He presses his ear against the stone, feeling foolish-- but there it is, just as she said: a slow liquid pulse beneath the blood-warm stones, steady and comforting.  

He is tired, he realizes.  Tired, and everything aches, and it seems too much work to walk the few paces to the bed, or the chair before the fire, and his leg would much rather he just slide slowly down to the floor where he is, so he does.  He turns and presses his cheek to the wall, listening to the heart of the North beat in a rhythm he doesn’t understand and can’t follow, until his eyes close, and the world sleeps around him.

* * *

Gendry dreams in uneasy, blackened fragments: cold hands burn against his shoulders, the same that burnt her throat, the dead over the wall, stinking like bile and brass and leeks and sour wine, bitter like willow-- drink this, now-- pulling him down and down and down into the bodies beneath, still breathing, a wolf against his chest.  Three daggers pinion him to the red bedclothes, and he fights against the tethers-- son, stay _down_ \-- as she, pale and scarred and bare, opens him with dragonglass, his blood a hot spring pulsing through the fine stone of her hands, tracing down and down to rest on his thigh, and-- lucky, she says, _lucky_ , and presses steel and stone and fire into his wound, and--

* * *

He wakes in a sweat, hot and damp beneath heavy furs.  Pushes himself up on his elbows, muscles shaking like summer leaves ahead of a storm, confused by the soft mattress beneath him until he remembers.  It comes all of a piece: Clegane’s goading, the Dragon Queen, Lord of Storm’s End, too much ale. Arya. The stairs to the keep, a fever, and the maester holding a cup to his lips and a knife to his leg.  He peels back the furs, and someone has stripped him of his clothes and put him in a long nightshirt of fine linen. There is a clean bandage wrapped around his thigh.

It is the quiet of late night or early morning, the fire burning low in the hearth, and there is an elderly woman he does not know slumped in one of the chairs, snoring softly.  On the table next to her there is a pewter pitcher, and Gendry is taken by a thirst so profound he can think of nothing else.

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and moves to stand, but his thigh buckles and his feet slide on the woven mat of rushes, like a foal trying to account for newly-discovered legs.  “Fuck,” he says, catching himself awkwardly on the rails.

The old woman starts awake with a snort, and he curses inwardly.  “Sorry,” he says as she blinks at him, and tries to push himself back up onto the bed.  It is more difficult than it ought to be. “It was just-- water?”

The woman levers herself out of the chair and lurches over to him.  “Here, milord,” she says, and wraps a strong arm around his middle. She lets him lean heavily on her bent shoulders, and they make their awkward way to the hearth.

“Sorry,” he says again as she settles him into the chair.

She shakes her head.  “Nothing to be sorry for, milord,” she says.  Her eyes are a watery blue as they search his face, and she places the back of her hand against his forehead and temple.  Gendry feels impossibly young for a moment. “Seems to have broken, then,” she says, satisfied, and reaches for the pitcher and cup.

His hands shake as he raises the cup to his mouth, and he spills some down his chin.  It is cold and bitter, and he make a face as he swallows. “Willowbark,” she explains, and he nods. Remembers the taste in his mouth from his dreams, and takes another deep draught, trying to ignore the sour vinegar beyond the cold tin of the water.

“Better?” she asks, hands on her hips.  She might have seen fifty years, or seventy.  It was difficult to tell by firelight.

“Yes,” he says.  Shifts awkwardly and asks, “Actually, could I--?”

“You’ll need the chamberpot, I expect,” she says, matter-of-fact, and brings him the lidded jar.  She helps him stand again and asks, “Can you manage yourself, milord?” and he grits, “ _Yes_ , thank you,” and turns away.  He hears her harrumph, and for a moment he isn’t sure he can manage to piss with her in the room, but his bladder insists.  “How long--?,” he asks, trying to ignore his embarrassment.

“Two days, milord,” she says, and he hears her begin to busy herself at the bed.  His bladder empty at last, he covers the pot and sits back in the chair, feeling worlds better.  “A nice surprise you were for Maester Wolkan, flat on the floor and burning up,” the woman says, and pulls the furs into a pile at the foot of the bed.  “Thought it was the flux, he did, until he saw that leg of yours.” She clucks her tongue and strips the sweat-stained sheets from the mattress.

Gendry pulls at his nightshirt to get a better look at the wrapping on his thigh.  “Knew it was healing slow,” he admits. “But I’ve had worse burns smithing, so I didn’t think much of it.”

“That’s the way of it,” the woman agrees.  She opens a camphor chest against the wall and pulls out a neat stack of fresh sheets.  “The maester said it wasn’t the burn, anyhow. Something went sour under it. The dead got you there?” she asks, glancing pointedly at his thigh, and he covers it awkwardly, saying, “I think so.  Can’t remember, exactly.”

She tucks the sheet neatly under the corners of the mattress and nods.  “Been happening a lot, the maester says. Blood poisoning and fever and the like, with wounds from the dead. Never seen so many go bad.  Nearly run through the willow and wen, we have. Now,” she says, “I reckon a bath would settle you, milord. I’ll have one brought up, and see what the kitchen has to spare.”

Gendry shakes his head. “It’s the middle of the night,” he protests.  

The woman looks at him oddly.  “What has that got to do with anything, I’d like to know,” she says, and picks up the chamberpot at his feet.  She shifts the lid and looks inside. “Good color,” she says approvingly, and Gendry flushes. “Now, you just sit comfortable, milord,” she says, “and I’ll be right back, and we’ll have you settled in no time.”

She makes her way to the door, and Gendry says, “Wait,” and she stills.  “I don’t know your name,” he says.

The furrows at the corners of her eyes deepen with her smile.  “Bertey, milord,” she says.

“Thank you, Bertey,” he says.

“You’re welcome, milord,” she says, bobbing her head.  “I hope I know my duty. Or what the little lady would do to me when she returns, I don’t like to think,” she adds, and is gone before he can ask what she means.

* * *

Maester Wolkan is a large man, and the chain hanging over his shoulders is the most intimidating thing about him.  “It is real, and binding,” he tells Gendry, earnest, bringing a half dozen scrolls to the table in the library where Gendry sits, some days after the fever breaks.  Gendry has spent them largely confined to his room, drinking bone broth at Bertey’s insistence and watching out the lone window as the Northern forces mustered to march, slowly and painfully, south to the capital.

“At least, it will be binding when she takes King’s Landing,” Wolkan corrects himself. “The Queen drafted the declaration of legitimacy ere she left, with copies to be sent to all the holdfasts in the Stormlands.  Your claim cannot be contested in good faith.” He unrolls a large scroll, the vellum fine and crossed with the spider lines of black script, and holds it for Gendry’s viewing.

“I can’t read,” Gendry says, blunt.  He dislikes the library; its spiral stairs winded him, and his continued weakness is frustrating.  Beyond that, the shelves all hold secrets he cannot manage, and the Stark direwolves carved in the lintels above him seem to growl at his trespass.  He misses the forge.

To his credit, Wolkan gives only the slightest pause.  “Shall I read it, then, my lord?” he asks, and Gendry considers throwing the damn thing into the fire.  But there are other copies, Wolkan said, and the Queen would likely only write another.

“If you would like,” he says, and shrugs.

Wolkan clears his throat, and reads:  “We hereupon Declare, as Daenerys of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Protector of the Realm, True Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, by right of Blood and Justice, the Legitimacy of Lord Gendry Baratheon, lawful son of Lord Robert Baratheon, the Usurper, Heir to Storm’s End and the Estates of that Land, by right of true Inheritance.  He will Accept and take upon Himself and his Heirs said Lands and Noble Dignity, with all things thereunto Annexed and all incumbent Obligations to the Crown. These Titles and Diginities We do Proclaim and He will Accept, promising to Serve and Assist the true Queen by Right as a faithful Servant and Leigeman, and in Full Understanding of the dread Justice which awaits Betrayal of Our Trust.”

Gendry finds a laugh in his throat, bitter and choking.  “Why is it that sounds more like a threat than an honor?” he asks.

“Because it is one, my lord,” Wolkan says bluntly.  “You have a blood claim to the throne she wants, and thus she seeks your loyalty through the gift of a name and your father’s ancestral lands.”  

“You are a young man,” he says carefully, “and strong.  You fought well, here, and north of the Wall, and men know it.  You have the confidence of John Snow. You are not ill-favored,” he says, and Gendry feels the back of his neck heat, thinking of Arya’s eyes, gone hot and silver in torchlight.  But she has gone, the servants say, without word even to her sister. “The Queen assumes you might marry,” Wolkan continues, and Gendry goes still, loathe to think of it, “and on the strength of your father’s blood, had you made it known, you might have married into wealth and power, and sought to challenge her.”

“So she gives me wealth and power herself,” Gendry says.  “And I am gelded.”

Wolkan smiles.  “If you like, my lord.”  He unrolls a second scroll, a map, and Gendry sees a stag rearing up along the coast.  The Stormlands, he supposes. “Gelded,” Wolkan says, “or made. The Stormlands are rich with timber--” he traces a finger over two heavy green blotches that Gendry takes for forests, “--and the coastal plains around Storm’s End are some of the finest farmland in the Kingdoms.  A sensible lord, less given to excess than the former Lord of Storm’s End, should live very well indeed, even without the beneficial considerations of the Dornish trade.”

“Dornish trade,” Gendry repeats, and feels his eyebrows climb to the top of his head.

“Salts and spices and peppers, mainly,” Wolkan says.  “And sand steeds.”

Gendry laughs, and finds he cannot stop.  Sand steeds and farmland, by all the burning gods. He knows as much about trading snarks and grumpkins, or maintaining an altar to the Lady of Waves.

“Are you all right, my lord?” Wolkan asks, and Gendry tries to control himself, but the laughter won’t stop, desperate and panicked to his own ears.

“And that’s all it takes,” he gasps, finally, shoulders still shaking. “Some words on a paper, and I’m better than I was?  I’m fit to-- to be lord of a fucking castle, and to command men, and send them to die, and starve their families?” He thinks of his mum, coughing bloody into her sleeve.  Thinks of Mott, and the beatings, of his worth being counted out in a few silver dragons.

“My lord--” Wolkan begins, but Gendry stands.  Shakes his head. “It doesn’t hold,” he says. “Either I was worth it, without a name or a father or a silver in my pocket, or I’m not worth it now. I haven’t changed.  It’s just words,” he tries to explain, and hears her say, _That’s not me_ , and thinks he might understand. “I’m a smith, not a lord,” he says, and knows it to be true.

“You could try being both,” Wolkan suggests, kind.

Gendry thinks of the heat of the forge, the satisfaction of striking right and true and strong, about making linchpins to reset doors and breastplates to cover hearts.  He thinks of a sword he promised he would make and the hands that should hold it. “Steel can only be one thing at a time,” he tells Wolkan, and walks to the stairs, slow on his mending leg.  

There is work to be done.

**Author's Note:**

> To whit:
> 
> 1\. Gendry knows his proposal was dumb, thanks. He's trying not to think about it too much.  
> 2\. If they're not gonna explain why he isn't riding off with Jon to be dumb in King's Landing, I will.  
> 3\. Acts of legitimacy are fucking weird, yo. Gendry isn't sure how to deal with this yet.
> 
> And also:
> 
> 4\. I cribbed most of the phrasing for Gendry's declaration of legitimacy from Parliament's _Titulus Regius_ of 1484, which declared Richard III to be king. Honestly, it is the bitchiest document in the world and I love it, although I do not love the spelling. The Random Capitalization is pretty boss, though.


End file.
